Brettjo :: Microsoft Exchange Messaging

So today I have been actively learning a little bit more about Powershell and generally playing with some of the features which are not that readily obvious. I was chatting with a colleague yesterday, Paul Flaherty, and we have both been overwhelmed with the power that "Monad" will give to the Exchange Administrator.

My previous post was pretty basic and today I learnt something pretty cool. Accessing the registry through Monad.

Through MSH you can type: IPCONFIG which will tell you about your IP settings, you can run NOTEPAD which will open a Notepad, navigate up and directories using regular DOS commands. TAB Auto-Complete also works.

Here's how, and there are a couple of ways of doing so.

1. Open MSH
2. Type: cd hklm:
3. This will change the MSH context to [MSH] HKLM:\Software you can DIR and CD\

The other way is:

1. Open MSH
2. Type: CD Registry::
3. This will change the MSH context to [MSH] Microsoft.Msh.Core\Registry::>
4. Type CD HKLM
5. Type CD Software
6. Try it and you'll get the idea..!

To return back to the regular [MSH] context type cd c:

Other top tips:

• Get-Service lists all the services running on the box
• Get-Process lists all the process running on the box

Have a good Bank Holiday..!

Over the past couple of days a few mails have floated through my Inbox asking for advice on capacity and performance planning for Ex2003. It can be quite a challenge to make sure that your Exchange Infrastructure is up to the job and planning is key to a successful installation.

I posted previously on an article written by two Exchange MCS guys here in the UK disussing how to use JetStress and Loadsim but you may also want to make sure that you plan for any "What-If's" well you can using the Capacity Planner

"Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner 2006 helps size and plan deployments of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 by providing you with the tools and guidance to deploy efficiently while planning for the future by allowing for "what-if" analyses"

I assume, that when our own internal perf testing hascompleted that this tool will be updated to accomodate Ex2007. I will let you know as and when.

I have been updating some of my Ex2007 presentations today and I came across a deck which had an a very useful appendix, rather than wait for me to come to you, here they all are - some you will know and use day in, day out, others not so.

Here they are:

Exchange Server 2007 Preview Site
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/preview/

Exchange Server TechCenter
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/

Exchange 2007 On-Line Help
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/excha...

Webcasts
http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/tnexchangeserver.mspx

Virtual Labs
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/traincert/virtuallab/exchange.mspx

Exchange Product Team Blog
http://www.msexchangeteam.com/

Exchange Hosted Services
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/default.mspx

Microsoft Forefront Security
http://www.microsoft.com/forefront/default.mspx

You may have seen this already from EHLO, but I have just registered and it looks as though this is going to be an incredibly useful site to for the inner depths of Ex2007 and the Powershell. Certainly going to keep an eye on this..!

http://www.exchangeninjas.com/

"This site was created to enable rapid sharing of tips, tricks and FAQs for the Exchange 2007 Beta. This is a wiki site, which means you should feel free to jump in and contribute by adding new content, editing existing content or simply by leaving comments on various pages. If you don't feel like editing content but have a request for content, just let the community know by asking a question.

To get started, please register (button on the right) and feel free to make changes - that's what wikis are for!

Also, check out the recent changes page to see what other people have been contributing. Browse the FAQs, Tips and Tricks and PowerShell Scripts sections to get more ideas."

So this isn't Exchange but I wanted to let you know about the following two events that are happening in London and Reading:

11 September 2006, London: Windows Vista System Integrity Technologies

Windows Vista will ship with several new system integrity technologies, including code integrity, secure startup, service hardening, mandatory integrity control and Internet Explorer protected mode. In this session, Steve Lamb explores how these technologies work to thwart malware's attempts to take over your computer.

14 September 2006, Reading: What’s New in Administering Vista

In this session, we will examine Group Policy functionality improvements that have been made with Windows Vista. We will describe the new and updated features and how these help to alleviate the problems that were present with previous versions of Windows.

You are  probably aware from playing about with BETA2 that X400 is not an integral part of Ex2007, however I wanted to draw your attention to the following 3rd party announcement.

In the majority of cases it probably won't raise too many eyebrows but you may want to have a read of the above article if it does.

So for the past month or so I have been forbidden to Blog about Windows Live Writer, the tool that I have been using to write my Blog entries..!

Clive beat me to it :) but if your a blogger and need a nice way of writing your entries, then this is the tool for you..!

Windows Live Writer Beta 1 is now available. You can download Beta 1 at:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/9/a/f9a19f2d-cec4-4a25-9b0b-eb9655ea7561/Writer.msi

Today I have been installing Ex2007 servers into my existing Ex2003 test environment all in Virtual Server, all is pretty cool even got CCR working out the box.

One element I still trying to get my head round is MONAD (Powershell), my problem is that I struggle to work out what commands and parameters are available and valid. Sure you can run:

Get-Excommand |format-table -wrap

But that just lists out EVERYTHING..! :)

So today whilst configure my UMSipPhone for testing, I thought I would try this in MSH (probably not the best component to test on..!) so this is what I did all from Exchange Powershell to work out what commands I can use.

Open Powershell:

1. CD \ (Returns the cursor to the left of the screen)
2. get-excommand *um* (This dumped out all commands that had UM in the cmdlet)
3. This illustrated that there is a Test-UMConnectivity cmdlet available along with a load of others.
4. get-excommand Test-UMConnectivity (This dumped out the cmdlet, but didn't wordwrap, so...)
5. get-excommand Test-UMConnectivity |format-table -wrap (This was brill as you then get to see what parameters and definitions can be parsed)

So far, so good but in all honesty I personally need to know more - a bit of help in constructing the command would be very useful at this point :) So.....

get-help Test-UMConnectivity

You then get a very details description of what each parameter does, but example scripts for that cmdlet at the bottom..! Ace. 

As you dig deeper, you'll get to know more, but in all honesty the key to learning this is to try it yourself.

Hopefully many of you will have now downloaded Ex2007 BETA2 and getting familiar with the new product.

I discussed Forefront recently and received some feedback from one of my team as to why I hadn't included Exchange Hosted Services (EHS)

You can find out exactly what the product does here and also benefit from a free 30 day trail if you sign-up here, it will certainly help in securing and providing a robust messaging solution.

Enjoy..!

A little while ago I posted a short article on ExTRA well yesterday this became a reality and V1 can be dowloaded from here

"The Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant programmatically executes a set of troubleshooting steps to identify the root cause of performance, mail flow, and database mounting issues.

The tool automatically determines what set of data is required to troubleshoot the identified symptoms and collects configuration data, performance counters, event logs and live tracing information from an Exchange server and other appropriate sources.

The tool analyzes each subsystem to determine individual bottlenecks and component failures, then aggregates the information to provide root cause analysis."

Jon Avner explains more here

Slightly off the Exchange topic today but with good reason. I have recently seen a few interesting mails fly through my mailbox regarding what's happening with IE. In a nutshell Internet Explorer 7 will be known under two different names:

IE7+ running on Windows Vista: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)

IE7 running on Windows XP: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)

The purpose of the “+” symbol is simple - IE7 installed on Vista exploits Vista technology

For more details, take a look here

Some may have also read about the fact that IE7 will be pushed out via AutoUpdate.

I personally feel that this is great, quite simply because of the new security technology that is included to make a very secure browsing environment as well as a great streamlined browsing experience for the user.

I know from working in support, that testing is key to a successful deployment, simply to make sure that any issues that may arise, can be ironed out before widespread deployment occurs. Which is why you may be interested in the following link to initially disable the autodelivery of IE7 whilst testing is carried out.

For those that wish to test IE before it RTM's can download the BETA builds can do so from here.

Whilst playing with Exchange 2007 BETA 2 you may want to also download and install BETA 1 of Microsoft Forefront (AV)

You can download BETA 1 from here with further information on what the latest offerings can give you here

A good illustration of the security product roadmap is here

You may have seen on Eileen's Blog her recent post about Zune. Certainly worth having a read of the links on the post, but you may also want to take a look at the following :)

https://www.comingzune.com/

I've registered, so as more information comes available we'll all get to know about it....!

Two guys I work closely with in the UK, Greg Taylor and Simon Shepherd, have written a great article on provisioning and simulating Exchange in a Sandbox. It explains everything you need to know about:

EDIT: Sorry forgot to actually add the link..! :) You can access it here

Completely off the Exchange topic today, as I wanted to highlight a little application that I have been using for a while now which is quite simply brill.

I am finding myself rebulding my Toshiba M5 fairly frequently now with later builds of Vista. I needed a way of sharing data between my machines which is lighter in features than Groove but also serves as a similar purpose.

If you haven't already give www.foldershare.com a go, it's free.

If your a MSN Messenger user, then you may well have used an iteration of the same technology in Sharing Folders.

I have configured Foldeshare so it replicates My Favourties between all four of my machines so no matter where I am, home or at work' I get the same Favourties no matter where I am.

But even better than that it can replicate any folders, such as My Documents or others you choose between your own machines, or even other peoples.

Try it and you'll love it.